Case study: Migrating smart ticketing solutions

The challenge

This case study looks at three local authorities who approached Unicard separately with similar requests to update their existing Unicard smart ticketing solutions to our Smart Office CMS and add improved online portals for their customers.

Nottinghamshire County Council were using our previous CMS3 and CCRS portal systems to handle their smart ticketing for bus travel. However, after seeing a demonstration of our new Smart Office CMS solution, they decided to replace CMS3 with Smart Office to take advantage of its greater flexibility, easier configuration, and improved accessibility, design, and security. As a result, they asked Unicard to migrate their data from their old systems to Smart Office, and to move them to a newer implementation of the concessionary portal.

Oxfordshire County Council had been awarded Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP) funding to improve their bus services, and formed an enhanced partnership with local bus operators. They asked Unicard to modernise their IT infrastructure as part of the improvements. At this point, Oxfordshire already used a Unicard HOPS and Unicard CMS3 to deliver smart ticketing. They had nearly 200,000 cardholder records and more than 600,000 active cards recorded on CMS3. They decided to upgrade to our Smart Office CMS to provide enhanced functionality. They also asked Unicard to add two web portals to handle applications from customers for ENCTS concessionary travel and for school transport.

Norfolk County Council was an existing Unicard customer using our CMS3 on a SAM HOPS, alongside an ENCTS concessionary portal. They asked us to provide them with a standalone Unicard HOPS, upgrade CMS3 to Smart Office and supply a new concessionary portal.

Project requirements

For Nottinghamshire County Council, the requirements were:

• To provide a system for data storage, reporting, and production of all smartcard bus passes and correspondence relevant to ENCTS and companion (non-smartcard) customers
• Migrate existing CMS3 data from on-premise to the new Smart Office application hosted in the cloud with AWS (Amazon Web Services).
• Develop a new ENCTS concessionary web portal hosted in AWS
• Migrate their existing Unicard HOPS from on-premise to a Unicard HOPS hosted in AWS

For Oxfordshire County Council the requirements were similar, but they needed two separate portals. Their requirements were to:

• Provide a system for data storage, reporting and production of all smartcard bus passes and correspondence relevant to ENCTS and youth concessions for the council
• Migrate existing CMS3 data from on-premise to the new Smart Office application hosted in AWS
• Develop a new ENCTS concessionary web portal hosted in AWS
• Migrate their existing Unicard HOPS from on-premise to a Unicard HOPS hosted in AWS
• Provide a system for data storage and reporting for elderly and disabled customer cards

Norfolk County Council’s requirements included:

• Setup and configuration of a new Smart Office system to replace CMS3
• Setup of a new online Smart Office portal to replace their old portal
• Migration of data from CMS3 to Smart Office and from their SAM HOPS to a new Unicard HOPS
• Their existing printing bureau integration to continue with Euclid
• Standard set of HOPS and Smart Office reports via AWS QuickSight

Project solutions

Unicard handled the migration and establishment of key systems for Nottinghamshire County Council, Oxfordshire County Council and Norfolk County Council, transitioning them to Smart Office and a HOPS hosted in AWS. This work included:

Smart Office implementation and migration

• Migrating the existing CMS3 data from the councils’ on-premises infrastructure to the new Smart Office application hosted on AWS
• Providing a system for data storage, reporting and management of all smartcard bus passes and correspondence relevant to ENCTS for the councils

Web portals development

• Developing and deploying a single web portal hosted on AWS for Nottinghamshire and Norfolk
• Developing and deploying two web portals hosted on AWS for Oxfordshire: an ENCTS concessionary travel portal, and a school transport management portal for home-to-school travel services

Unicard HOPS migration

• Migrating the existing Unicard HOPS from on-premises infrastructure to a Unicard HOPS hosted on AWS as part of the integrated cloud-based solution

Data management for concessionary services

• Providing a system for data storage and reporting for the elderly and disabled cardholders within the ENCTS scheme
• Providing a system for data storage and reporting for a school transport scheme (Oxfordshire only)

Key outcomes

The migration from CMS3 to a new Smart Office solution provided the following benefits for the councils:

• Sustainability: The requirement for new CMS features demanded a move to a more functionally rich system
• Performance: New initiatives from the councils required increases in capacity and usage - this can now be provided via the new solution’s real-time APIs
• Customisation: Additional features can now be integrated in the new system and are more configurable
• Greater configurability and flexibility allow for more agile responses in areas such as messaging, new data fields, emails and exports
• Improved user interface: Smart Office has a modern web interface for all administration functions, and support for branding and theming
• More secure privacy features: Including additional data encryption
• Additional CRM features, including support for Single Sign-On (SSO) as well as payments and account management

Moving hosting from on-premise to the cloud with AWS provided benefits that include:

• Improved performance and scalability: AWS provides a highly scalable and flexible infrastructure, enabling applications to handle increased traffic and user demands effectively. This leads to enhanced performance, reduced latency and improved user experience.
• Enhanced security and compliance: AWS provides robust security features, including data encryption, firewalls and identity access management, to ensure the highest level of protection for sensitive data. Additionally, AWS complies with industry standards and regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA and PCI-DSS, further strengthening the councils’ data security.
• Increased agility and innovation: AWS services provide access to a wide range of tools and technologies to enhance the functionality of the council applications and enable rapid innovation.

Customer backgrounds

Nottinghamshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Nottinghamshire, serving a population of about 800,000, including nearly 200,000 children.

Oxfordshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Oxfordshire. More than 720,000 residents live in Oxfordshire’s villages and market towns, or in the historic city of Oxford and large town of Banbury.

Norfolk County Council is the upper-tier local authority for Norfolk. The predominantly rural county is home to more than 940,000 people across the districts of Breckland, Broadland, Great Yarmouth, North Norfolk, Norwich, King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, and South Norfolk.